HARRY BECKETT — Warm Smiles (review)

HARRY BECKETT — Warm Smiles album cover Album · 1971 · Fusion Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Sean Trane
After his sometimes-excellent Flare Up solo debut album, Barbados-born Harry Beckett came back with a solid second album, released the following year. Recorded midway through 71 in the London’s now-defunct Command studio (for the RCA label), HB reconvened most of his previous album’s quartet of participants (Taylor, Webb, Laurence) and again adding the same guests (percussionist Ricotti and saxman Osborne), to more or less duplicate Flare Up’s formula, despite some distinct differences between the two oeuvres.

Indeed, the 71-released Warm Smiles is once more halfway-torn between post-bop jazz and some red hot fusion. Opening on the loose 4/4 Harambee track, the album gets a 100 mph start, dictated by Webb’s fast drumming, but Beckett’s versatile trmpet provides some entertaining thoughts, underlined by Taylor’s Rhodes, with which he pulls a cools solo, 2/3 of the way through. The cooler Tender Is The Sky is much more “standardy” with Taylor switching to the acoustic piano, but the thing sounds tame ‘(and even lame) compared to the surrounding tracks. Indeed, the almost9-mins To Me, For Me opens on cosmic-jungle percussions (Frank Ricotti joined) coupled with Taylor’s moody Rhodes, before Beckett’s horn goes wild (and sometimes dissonant) on a boppy bass and drums base. The whole thing can sometimes be reminiscent of a Mwanihi-crossed Blue Note album.

The Shorter flipside opens on the gentle title track, and Osborne’s sax adds much colour to the soft melodies, where Taylor’s Rhodes adds much depth and a touch of modernism. The album-closing almost-10mins Tomorrow Early Morning is the album’s most adventurous track, where the augmented quartet gets funky (somewhere between Bitches and Mwandishi), with some almost-boppy chorus line, but filled with excellent solos from Osborne, Beckett and Ricotti.

Like many early-70’s British jazz albums, Warm Smiles was unavailable in any kind of format for literally decades, until the always-subtle Vocalion Label (despite jazz not being their specialty) finally released it, coupled with the following Theme For Fega, on a 2on2 CD reissue in 06. With many excellent moments, this album is well worth the investigation, especially linked with the more adventurous Fega album.

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